


Taking the Blame

by cairn



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Genre: F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-11 02:06:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5609746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cairn/pseuds/cairn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zack discovers the Turks' surveillance of Aerith. Tseng deals with the consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Taking the Blame

  
  


For a second, he didn’t question it. It was only natural that they would want to watch her. She was the only person who could coax life from the cracked pavements of the slums, the only one he had met there who didn’t reek of corruption.

Then he remembered who was watching her.

“Why, Tseng?” he asked, probably a little louder than he should have. One of the people walking through the corroded metal around them turned their head for a split second before realizing who was talking and hurrying along their way. 

“You don’t have to know,” Tseng replied curtly, his accent curving the consonants as he spoke. Zack’s nose wrinkled. 

“I need to know,” he said, glancing for a split second at the wooden doors he had just exited from. They didn’t fit together perfectly, and he could see through the crack between them a sliver of stone and butter-and-cream colored flowers.

“We would prefer you didn’t know.” Tseng spoke in the plural to indicate what and whom he represented. Zack grimaced. This was Tseng’s way of saying he wasn’t going to tell him anything more. Zack glanced at the sliver in-between the doors and then back at Tseng. 

“What does Shinra have to do with her?” Zack asked. It was obvious she was special. Anyone could see that. She had this way of looking at you like she knew everything about you, and Zack caught himself thinking sometimes that maybe she did know more about him than he told her. She could make flowers grow with only her smile. But Shinra had never bothered landscaping.

“She is safe,” Tseng answered. Zack folded his arms and tried to evaluate the truth of the statement, only to give up a few seconds later. Tseng had the most neutral face in all of humanity when he wanted to. Besides, he had been there at Banora. Of all the Turks, he probably trusted Tseng the most.

“Fine.” Zack leveled another hard look at Tseng. “But if anything happens to her, you’re taking the blame.” 

“She is safe,” Tseng repeated. Zack met his eyes for several long seconds before nodding. There wasn’t much he could do in the face of a Turk. Shinra kept to itself. Besides, if she was under the protection of the Turks (even if she was being watched), he doubted there was anything or anyone in the vicinity that could harm her.

 

-

 

Tseng glanced out the side window of the helicopter for a split second to see the dark metal blot on miles of rust-colored stone. _You’re taking the blame_ , he thought to himself. As though he hadn’t known the second that he heard the news who was at fault. 

A window of sunlight on her upturned face, the letters she pressed into his hands whenever she saw him, and Reno’s call, half static, to inform him that they had been too late to deliver any of the letters in the end. He sighed. He was getting old.

“Sir?” Elena asked. He turned to look at her, at the worry lines in her face half-hidden by a sweep of blonde bangs. Her expression morphed into uncertainty, and she busied herself with consulting the map.

“We’re six minutes away,” she said. Tseng nodded. He knew the way to their landing site well by now. The blur of metal had disappeared, miles behind them. There had been tire tracks leading up to a few meters away from it. That was where Strife parked, he assumed. They were fairly recent, if they hadn’t blown away in the dust storm a few days ago. 

“Sir?” Elena’s voice, hesitant through the helicopter’s mouthpiece. He pulled his gaze from the stone chasms below them to meet her eyes again. She immediately backed away again, fiddled with a bent corner of the map, and then dropped it quickly as though realizing she had been doing so.

“What is it?” he asked. His voice was clipped, but as he spoke he could recognize the erosion of his accent, the tired edge his tone had begun to accumulate. Reeve’s news: the vision of a girl in water, falling. In his mind, she had always sunk, slipped away into the Lifestream’s golden-green substance, glowed like phosphorescence and disappeared. His personal familiarity with the topic told him that a dead body dropped in water always floated to the surface in the end. Some things were inescapable – some memories as well, perhaps.

“We’re starting our descent.” Elena flipped a dial on the board in front of her, busying herself with the preparations. He noticed her hand faltering, the silent sign of her worry. He was preoccupied; thus, Elena was troubled. Tseng straightened. 

“Yes. Prepare to land.” The rusted canyons were behind them, now. The sea stretched out ahead of them, Junon growing larger in the view of the windshield. The sun was always so bright in this region of Gaia. Tseng shut his eyes. Growing old was such a problem in this business. One gained the nasty habit of growing attached to people. Zack’s words rose in his ears again: _You’re taking the blame_. 

“I know,” he muttered.

“Sir?” 

He opened his eyes. Elena looked at him blankly, hands on the controls. “Elena, eyes ahead while you’re landing.”

“Yes, sir!” She quickly straightened and focused intently on the city that stretched ahead of them. 

He shut his eyes against the blinding midday Junon sunlight. As the landing system kicked into gear and Elena dealt with a multitude of beeping equipment, she failed to hear Tseng’s words, under his breath, once again. 

“I know.”


End file.
